Bulgaria’s mortality rate in Q2 2022 down y/y

A total of 24 910 deaths were registered in Bulgaria in the second quarter of 2022, which was 9702 – about 28 per cent – fewer than in the second quarter of 2021, the National Statistical Institute (NSI) said on July 18, citing preliminary data.

The crude mortality rate – meaning the ratio of the number of deaths during the year to the average annual population in that year expressed per 1000 inhabitants – in the second quarter of 2022 was 14.6, compared with 19.8 in the second quarter of 2021.

The highest mortality in the second quarter of 2022 was registered in the 14th week (April 4 to 10) – 2 272, or 17.4 per 1000 people of the average annual population.

The lowest number of deaths in the second quarter of 2022 was in the 23rd week – 1691 people, or 12.9‰.

The number of deaths in the second quarter of 2022 is in sharp contrast to the situation in the second quarter of 2021, when 33 945 deaths were registered in Bulgaria, an increase of 33.8 per cent compared with the second quarter of 2020.

It was during the second quarter of 2020 that Bulgaria’s Covid-19 crisis began to deteriorate rapidly, after the first Covid-19 deaths were registered in the country in March that year, towards the end of the first quarter.

The number of deaths per quarter has generally tended to reflect the Covid-19 situation in the country.

In the first quarter of 2021, 36 152 deaths were registered, an increase of 26.1 per cent compared with the first quarter of 2020.

As noted, deaths in the second quarter of 2021 were 33.8 per cent up on the second quarter of 2020, while in the third quarter of 2021, the year-on-year increase was 17.4 per cent, and in the fourth quarter of last year, the year-on-year increase was 4.2 per cent.

In the first quarter of 2022, the number of deaths was 4.3 per cent higher than in the first quarter of 2021.

This means that the figures released by the NSI on July 18 show that the second quarter of 2022 was the first three-month period since the beginning of last year that the number of deaths in Bulgaria was lower than in the same quarter a year before.

(Main photo, of the entrance to Sofia Central Cemetery: Edal Anton Lefterov)

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